Warning: this is long and not well written- I can't face working on it anymore but I started it, and I needed to finish it.
I can't. I just can't.
Back in 2007 the love of my life wandered back in and to say the least I was grateful. We had known each other for 23 years but we were never single at the same time- not until 2007 when he called me out of the blue.
There are no words that can express the emotions I went through over the next few months, I went from literally being on top of the world to the depths of hell and things will never be the same for me.
Rick and I went back a long long way. We met when I moved to Texas in 1984. I was a young dispatcher, he was a young policeman. He had just gotten married, I got married shortly there after- in the years that followed we wished we had met each other sooner. Rick and I didn't have an affair. It was more than that. It was a deep emotionally rooted connection and taboo friendship filled with what if's and fantasies. Eventually we began to meet on the sly, we loved each other, we talked for hours and hours on the phone, but we never once touched each other. That was a boundary we just never felt we needed to cross, our relationship and commitments to our families meant more than that.
It was right before Haley and Casey's wedding when he called and as soon as I heard his voice I was immediately back in love with him. I felt as though the time lords had picked that moment because anything sooner wouldn't have given me the independence that I was about to have. We spent many, many hours on the phone reminiscing about the past, dreaming about the future, grateful for the present.
Once the wedding was over, I worked non stop overtime to be able to fly to Austin to see him. It had been 8 years since I had seen him last and I still recognized him, from even a distance just from the way he walked. We were for once, allowed to be in love. My days in Austin were wonderful. We spent most of our time at his house, talking, catching up- being as though this was the first time we had ever known each other as single people, and I had never been where he lived before, and I wasn't in Austin to be entertained, I just wanted to be with him. Being there was a little weird, but comfortable too, at long last I was content, just to be.
I did want to see Jenny while I was in Texas though, so we made plans to meet her and Xavier at the Riverwalk in San Antonio to eat and hang out. Rick was short on cash so I gave him $100 so he could pay and not feel like a yutz. I didn't think anything about it. No big deal.
I was only with Rick for about 3 days yet the thought of leaving was overwhelmingly sad. I remembering sitting across from him staring at him, and telling him I was trying to memorize everything about him because the thought of leaving and not being with him anymore was just killing me. Finally, I suggested that I go home long enough to work some more OT and then come back in a month or so. We mutually agreed, and that's exactly what I did. I think during that time in the spring of 2007, was the first in my life that I have ever been accused of glowing.
Rick and I talked on the phone daily and after a few weeks, we were talking about him moving to Maine to be with me. I had no desire to move back to Texas permanently, plus I had a house and he didn't, so it seemed the best option and he was all for it. Additionally, he is retired and makes a good sum of money, so it didn't really matter where he lived. I felt as though all of my years of various suffering and hell were about to be repaid with a wonderful future and he sid he felt the same way.
One day during our phone call he said that he was a bit embarrassed for me to come back to Texas because he was broke and he needed to register his car and get new tires for it. He said after he did that he would have no money to spend on me during my visit. I assured him that I didn't need to be entertained, that I was content just to be there, but he said he still felt bad about it. Well, I had already bought the plane ticket, plus, I would be devastated not to return to Austin so he said if I would loan him $600, he could get his car taken care of and then pay me back later in the month. I didn't even hesitate, I sent him a check on May 4th, he cashed it on May 7th.
By the end of May I was back in Austin. I think I was there for 4 days. We spent three of those days shopping for wedding rings and making plans to get married. I did not have one single second thought about that except that he seemed like he was a little too preoccupied by his ex wife sometimes- I asked him about it though and he assured me he wanted nothing to do with her, so I let it go.. and while it was a big step to be planning to get married, it wasn't like he was a stranger, or even a new relationship, he was someone I had known for years and had quietly been waiting for, for most of my life. It was very exciting!
Since we were planning on this life commitment, I thought I should at least meet his grown son while I was in Texas. The Spurs happened to be having a play off game in San Antonio and we decided that would be a fun thing for all of us to do, plus I wanted to see Jenny and Xavier again too so we all agreed to go. The tickets cost me over $350, and I gave Rick another $100 in cash so he wouldn't feel like a yutz and he could buy us dinner afterward.
In any other situation I would never have been so free with my money. After all it took a lot of overtime to earn it, but I trusted him completely and the fact that he had half of his apartment packed by the time I had returned back to Austin was a good indication that he really was planning to move to Maine to be with me. We talked about that extensively. We knew how hard the adjustment would be for everyone, but we were so happy to have the chance to be together that we were willing to do whatever it took.
I left Austin in late May, and for the first time I didn't cry when I got on the plane. I left another check for $600 in his car so he could pick up our rings that we had ordered from James Avery. The plan was that in a month I would return back to Texas and we would drive to Maine together with his stuff, so I knew I wasn't saying good bye for very long! The plans we had made were going to make life fantastic! Plus, I was going to be very busy in between these trips. I had taken pictures of all of his furniture and things he planned to bring to Maine just so I could start making room for them when I got home! The time was going to fly.
Once home, a day or two went by when he didn't call. I wasn't even concerned with that- I trusted him unconditionally and figured he was just as busy as I was. But in a matter of days the phone calls became fewer, shorter, and less enthusiastic. I asked him over and over again what was wrong. All he would say is that he was having second thoughts about moving and as much as I didn't like to hear that, I did understand it. It was a big, big step. I told him we could slow down- we could just go back and forth for visits, I encouraged him to come to Maine to visit before making the commitment but nothing seemed to console him. We went emotionally back and forth and had ups and downs over the next few weeks. When it came time for me to make a third trip to Texas it was obvious that he did not want me to. I was completely devastated.
I couldn't understand anything anymore. It was all I could do to make it to work everyday, I was beyond being able to even function. I had no idea how things had managed to change so rapidly and he wasn't telling me anything. One day I saw he was on line, I emailed him and then started chatting with him but he was not writing back. Then I got a chat message "I just got another one, I have to get moved FAST" I questioned what that meant and demanded he answer me. He made up some idiotic explanation, but I knew what it meant. I knew the "I just got another one" was referring to the email I had sent and the "I have to get moved FAST" meant he was in fact moving from his apartment, but it was not to come to Maine - or to be with me at all. The chat message he had sent me was a mistake, it was intended for... his ex wife. Then he changed his messenger avatar to a picture of him and her.
A part of my soul withered up and died that day. I realized, at least deep on the inside, that for some reason all of this had been a game to him. Just a game. I wrote a lot of poetry about it. I made myself a written plan of how to survive it, and I put a stop payment on the last check I had given him. Within a week or so I wrote him a letter asking for the repayment of the original $600 I had sent him. I mailed a copy of the canceled check with it. It was returned to me as "moved left no address". It was then that I decided that all of the other things I had done financially, buying plane tickets and all of the other expenses associated with traveling, the yutz money I had given him- all of that was my own choice, but the $600 he had asked me for and said would be paid back, was a mutual agreement. I told myself I would not rest until I had that money back.
I have done somethings that I am not proud of in the attempts to get that money back, including writing this blog. But here it is going on 4 years later and I still don't have it. And it's not like Rick and I have not talked during the last 4 years! Every few months he will call and tell me how much of a mistake he made by going back to his ex wife,(it only lasted a couple of months) how he has always loved me, how he will make things right between us. Each time he calls or emails he asks if he can come and live with me and at first I told him that we had way too many issues to work out before an arrangement like that could be made, but in time, I just decided to play along with him- after-all, it's easy to make a promise that you know you will never have to keep.
However, all along, in the back of my head, all I wanted was that $600 back and I would stop at nothing to get it..if it meant playing the game, then so be it. By December of 2010 we were talking on line quite often and on the phone sometimes. It honestly still hurt me to hear his voice, to face what could have been- mostly it hurt me that all of my fantasies of him that amounted to more than half of my life were all proven to be a lie, but by January he agreed to pay back the $600. The next day he changed it to February. Actually, I didn't care, I just wanted it in writing. (Prior to that he had claimed he had no recollection of ever having borrowed the money, or that he never cashed the check. He still had the ring check I had put a stop payment on and used that as evidence to back his story that he had never cashed it. He was unwilling to admit that there were 2 different checks)
By the end of January, we were on the outs again, be it karma or something subliminal I sent him by accident a message intended for someone else saying that he had finally agreed to pay back the money. We have not spoken since then except for a chat message that was beyond comprehension and ended with him writing BRB on January 27. Needless to say, it is mid March and I still don't have the money and I am getting ruthless.
In my life, I have lost a lot of loves. Some I never think of, some I still mourn, but Rick is the only one I can say I truly hate. I hate what we became, I hate what my memory of him became and I hate myself for what I became because of him. It's not even about the money- the money is just the fuel of the flames, what feeds the hatred- I want to have no feelings for him whatsoever but I have it programmed into my entire being that I can never be free of him as long as he owes me that $600.
I am not trying to hold on to him- I am trying to rid myself of him and in my mind, him returning that money is the only way I will be free. I wonder to myself all of the time, was $600 really worth it to him to cause so much pain, to lie to me and steal from me and use me? Me? Someone he had known for more than two decades? More importantly, I wonder to myself if $600 is really worth it to me to continue to have to dwell on his betrayal? I know that answer, I just don't know how to move on.
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